Early retirement is shrinking Gen X’s brain, new research warns

While economists sound alarms about Gen Z unemployment, new research points to a quieter crisis: Gen X workers retiring years before 65—and paying a steep cognitive price for it. About 35% of workers who have been unemployed for more than 24 weeks are over the age of 55, according to an April 2025 analysis. Over the last 35 years, the retirement age for men in particular has gotten younger, with about half of retirees saying they made the choice to stop working. For these workers, the financial risks are ample: Few retirees have a pension outside of Social Security, and with Social Security’s average benefit at about $18,000 per year, many will take the benefit before its peak, receiving far less money retiring at 62 than at 70. But new research suggests it’s not just money early retirees need to worry about, it’s also their health. A working paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research found that among American ages 51 to 75, leaving employment led to cognitive decline, while consistent employment caused greater sustained cognition. Though research has previously shown a correlation between early retirement and cognitive decline, University of California at Irvine economists sought to prove a causational relationship between the two. The researchers used data from 40,000 participants from the University of Michigan’s Health and Retirement Study (HRS), a longitudinal study that measures, among other variables, cognitive ability over time. They overlaid that data with County Business Patterns data generated by the U.S. Census to look at changes in cognitions following large labor demand shocks, finding “substantial declines” in cognitive scores following periods of meaningful negative employment shifts. The results of the study are clear to David Neumark, a UC Irvine professor of economics and study coauthor: There’s an urgent reason to keep Gen X in the workforce. “This would be yet another reason to say, ‘We should really think about the potent